Astonishing galactic smash-up as seen by the Gemini Observatory

Pictured above is a galactic amalgam of the fantastic proportions, at the center of which lies the polar-ring galaxy NGC 660. Around it, space debris like gas and dust, the wreckage of a colossal galactic struggle, litter its surroundings. Only a few of these bizarre space objects have been discovered thus far.

NGC 660 is in Pisces, and the vast ring of stars and debris around it – 40,000 light-years across – came from another galaxy in a collision that astronomers can now begin to unpick. The whole scene was captured with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph on the Fredrick C. Gillett Gemini North Telescope atop Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano.